Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

BEN: You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Another thing that sounds weird in retrospect. In all other movies, "Darth" is treated as a title, not as a name. Ben appears to be using "Darth" as a personal name, and not a title. As if he knows this guy Darth personally. Everyone else just calls him Vader, or Lord Vader.

Weird, maybe, but it's really no different than calling somebody "Captain."

Yeah, Vader had the Force/psychic impression that Obi-Wan didn't intend to leave the Death Star. He just wasn't prepared for his transformation into the Force and disappearance, as evidenced by Vader's boot jabbing into his former Master's empty robes as if to say "WTF just happened here?!?"

Obi-Wan vanishing from this mortal realm really took Vader by complete surprise and likely made him wonder if he hadn't indeed just become "more powerful than [he] could possibly imagine."

__________________

"Human instinct is pretty strong. You can't expect us to change overnight."

I always thought he knew that was going to happen, and he was just making sure he was dead.

Oh, you mean poking his boot into Obi-Wan's empty robes as if stunned at his disappearance? The books I've read that spell out what Vader was supposedly thinking at that moment lean in the direction of genuine wonderment....that Vader expected his lightsaber strike to cut through his former Master and physically kill him, and the sight of seeing his body completely vanish and his robes crumple to the deckplates was a big surprise.

Vader and Obi-Wan hadn't had contact with one another in 20 years so the former had no idea what the latter had learned during all that time in hiding. I'm sure Vader realized it was some sort of fantastic Force power he was unfamiliar with and the Emperor might have explained the disappearance to him at a later point (and that's making the assumption that even the Sith Master understood the event).

__________________

"Human instinct is pretty strong. You can't expect us to change overnight."

Well, I figured that Vader knew that Obi-Wan was going to die, but not that he would vanish, much less ascend.

In the context of the PT, this makes even more sense. The Sith were obsessed with material immortality, rather than spiritual immortality. Apparently, the possibility of spiritual immortality was unknown to either the Sith or the Jedi, until Qui-Gon secretly contacted Yoda.

That in and of itself is interesting. Luke starts off knowing only what little Ben showed him. But by the end of ANH, Luke's in on a big and profound secret—spiritual immortality—unknown to the Sith or the Jedi Order. That's probably why Obi-Wan refused to help Luke fight Vader, to keep that secret from the Sith.

__________________“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP” — Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)

I always thought he knew that was going to happen, and he was just making sure he was dead.

Oh, you mean poking his boot into Obi-Wan's empty robes as if stunned at his disappearance? The books I've read that spell out what Vader was supposedly thinking at that moment lean in the direction of genuine wonderment....that Vader expected his lightsaber strike to cut through his former Master and physically kill him, and the sight of seeing his body completely vanish and his robes crumple to the deckplates was a big surprise.

I had assumed that he was just checking to make sure that he was dead.

__________________
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

What I really wouldn't mind seeing would be a bit more delving into the TPM/ANH gap with either Obi-Wan or some of the other "rise of the Empire" stories - I mean it seems like the Republic goes from "Yay Aliens!" to "Sapiens only" in a very short amount of time.

I read some article that Ewan MacGregor is supposedly down to doing an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie - it WOULD be nice to see a bit more of him in live action as a younger Obi-Wan, while he's still young and fit enough to do it

__________________
"Here you are in the club with your bottle full of Bud, you got grillz you got bling, but playa you don't know a thing..." Alice Cooper - Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever

He also seems to be up for reprising Obi-Wan in the new Trilogy. It'd give us a chance to see Obi-Wan's Force ghost as a younger man (and possibly even one that can morph into Alec Guinness using modern CGI) and have Ewan interact with Mark Hamill the way the late, great Sir Alec once did.

Unless Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, Abrams and/or others have different ideas the new Trilogy would be the perfect excuse for both Ewan and Hayden to return as Force ghosts along with a CGI spirit Yoda to give advice and moral support to Luke and other leaders of the New Republic and revived Jedi Order.

Anybody who thinks they've seen the last of Hayden as Anakin Skywalker is probably deluding themselves whether they liked his performances or not.

__________________

"Human instinct is pretty strong. You can't expect us to change overnight."

EU materials did try to explain the human-centric nature of the Empire as part of a xenophobic, "speciesist" official policy enacted by the Emperor after he took power. He sought to purge as many exotic alien influences from his new regime as possible without damaging its overall effectiveness and power and thus elevated humans and humanoids to the highest positions of power in his New Order.

Of course none of this is explained in the actual films themselves, as we go from strange-looking aliens all over the place in ROTS to a galaxy ruled by pasty white guys with British accents in ANH twenty years later. One theory is that Palpatine was so angered by the Jedi Order, what it represented and its great diversity of species that he came to associate diversity of species with the despised Jedi philosophy and felt that he could only trust those most like himself: humans and humanoids.

__________________

"Human instinct is pretty strong. You can't expect us to change overnight."

Certainly all the clones looked alike. Maybe that somehow encouraged a culture of racial preference leading to prejudice in the military, which persisted even after the clones died out.

I asked what the assumption of species homogeneity in the Empire was based on, because the only Imperial institution we get a good look at is the military. The Senate was dissolved. We only get a glimpse of the Emperor's court, in ROTJ, but they aren't human.

__________________“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP” — Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)

Yeah, the three main dignitaries (Sim Aloo, Janus Greejatus, Kren Blista-Vanee) are clearly humanoid, but from a different species than the Earthlike humans seen filling the Imperial ranks in the OT. In reference materials they're sometimes referred to as "Coruscanti" but little or nothing else is said about them or their origins.

And, of course, Grand Admiral Thrawn in the EU is an example of a somewhat exotic alien who rose to great power in the hierarchy of the Imperial military so there were exceptions.

__________________

"Human instinct is pretty strong. You can't expect us to change overnight."

What I really wouldn't mind seeing would be a bit more delving into the TPM/ANH gap with either Obi-Wan or some of the other "rise of the Empire" stories - I mean it seems like the Republic goes from "Yay Aliens!" to "Sapiens only" in a very short amount of time.

I've always wondered where this theory comes from about the empire being bigots. Palpatine's advisors are all non-human in the PT. The lack of Empire aliens in the OT I chalk up to time and $ on make-up. The only time I remember bigot stuff thrown around is in the garbage EU, namely the poop Zahn books. Where in canon is this stated? A novelization?